Diskursteori möter idrott och hälsa

Through a discourse theoretical apparatus, this study examines Sweden's national curriculum, which is constructed for primary schools, pre-school class and leisure time classes. The study also examines the syllabus in physical education and the supplied comment material to the syllabus, the above mentioned material all valid from 1 July 2011. Using cultural researcher Marianne Winther Jørgensen's and communication researcher Louise Phillips interpretation of the political theorists Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory, the study identifies several discourses in the new curriculums. The analysis shows that the curriculums writers construct their expectations through a rhetoric that is perceived as instructional and descriptive. The analysis identified eight discourses, woven into three "orders of discourse", the body, health and physical education. It also shows that the governing curriculums consider gender as a binary construct, and is therefore unprepared to the view of the exclusion of "the other", as not only an exclusion of one sex, but several. Finally, the study shows that physical education may need an additional focus on variables such as gender, sexuality, socio-economic class and nutrition.